Find yourself an old version of Final Cut Pro on ebay or somewhere and you can get the cross platform full version of Final Cut Studio for $200. Check the Apple online upgrade programs. With that you can do anything you'll ever need and it just runs smokin fast on the intel machines. My set up is a MBP 2.0 connected to an Apple 24" cinema display with my external storage connected via FW.

Rich, Are you using the FW400 slot or using FW800 via an express-card. I'm wondering because it's finally time to edit my skimboarding video and the last time around I had a problems with dropped frames via a firewire drive.

My friend has final cut pro and I've been trying to use it a little, i don't want to spend the money until i can really use it,I've been looking into getting a tutorial because I'm completely new to it. Any of you have a good recomendation for a tutorial, that takes you from the basics up?

Sean I'm using a Graid 500gig connected via Nitro Express FW800 card. I'm getting rock solid playback using the DVCPro HD codec, not sure about the HDV codecs though I hear they require more bandwidth then the Panasonic. I can play back single stream HD off the builtin HDD as well (5400 rpm) but it does get bumpy at times.

There are many good tutorials on FCP all over the web. I'd start here:

rich, don't laugh...my girlfriend and i are considering getting a macbook. she wants a new laptop and i, well, i'm curious about macbooks. i'm gonna run vista on my current laptop, xp on my editing station, and mac os (whatever it is) AND xp on the mac. she would be using it for school (documents and spreadsheets), browsing and such, and i would use it for browsing and running a mortgage software. what would the absolute minimum i would need and how much would it run me? do they come pre-loaded w/ microsoft office? do any of 'em come with fcp?

It seems to me (unless you can just get a PC laptop way cheaper) that the new Intel Mac notebooks offer the best of both worlds, a fully funtional windows PC as well as a chance to try the OS X experience, just hold down the option key when you start up and tell it which OS to use. Other then maxing out the memory they come with all the ports etc that you need including ethernet and wireless/bluetooth. I haven't seen any bundles with FCP or Office at this point but they may be out there. I just bought 4 full version units of Mac office 2004 for work for $145 so SW wise it won't be too bad, everything else you need is normally bundled. Here's where I would check:

Apple stopped offering the 7200 rpm drives as options with the new MBP models. It could be the 5400 rpm drives are fast enough given the faster overall nature of the new processor. I've got a 2.33 model coming, I'll give HD playback a try when I get it.

As far as comparable PC notebooks go I read the regular Macbooks are flying off the shelves because they are considered very competativly priced overall given their features.